Learn How to Stay Organised and Efficient with Your Affiliate Marketing Campaigns

The author, A.A. Milne once said, “Organisation is what you do, before you do something, so that when you do it, it’s not all mixed up.”

Most of us, me included, start off on our affiliate journey without any real thought of organisation. We go along joining lots of affiliate marketing programs. Write a post and then forget about it and on to the next…. the excitement of the new and getting our business off the ground gets all of our attention.

Before we know it we have a whole heap of pages open on our laptop, we have collected a load of passwords, usernames, affiliate links, autoresponder campaigns and we have a big bundle of total chaos.

There will be a ton of things to keep up with. NEVER believe that you can store it all in your memory.

Most of us have difficulty recalling what we even ate 2 days ago. So our memory is bound to fail when we need it most.

Staying organised keeps us on track. Don’t be too hard on yourself though. You will be surprised at how many marketers and bloggers have desktop icons smothering their screen and spend a great deal of time looking for the right folders, pages, emails, images and links.

All of this can be a real drain on our energy and will also disrupt the flow of our thought processes. We need a system where everything is all neatly organised.

A.A.Milne was right. 

Any business we have should be organised before we start, so we don’t get mixed up when we begin the actual work. By being organised, we will reduce all of the stress of the clutter that we have created. If we get organised we will be unencumbered and be focused on our marketing efforts instead of wasting time sorting through a mess, just to find an email that has our password…..we have all been there !

So How Are We Going To Get Organised?

I am going to assume you have gotten in a mess like I did. However if you are really just starting out and have not created too much chaos yet then all the better. Take heed of my message, start as you mean to go on.

Let’s Start With Emails

Can you believe that I got to the point where I had over 18,000 unread emails. That doesn’t include the ones I read and didn’t delete because I thought it was useful or interesting but not something I could deal with right then.

You need to get into a habit of dealing with your emails daily. I now go to my inbox twice a day and deal with each email by either deleting it or putting it into a file that I can go to later when I have more time.

Sometimes, if I have time. I will click on a link in the email and find something useful or sometimes not. If it’s interesting I will file the page ( I will come to this later ) whatever the outcome I will go back and delete the email as it’s been used.

Always aim for an empty inbox. Delete or file. I have created seven different files for emails I will go back to later. One for interesting subjects that I will research ( or not ). One for important affiliate links and one for courses I may or not do. The others are my niche, specific. It doesn’t matter how many you have or what you call them as long as they make sense to you.

You would be wise to go through these files from time to time too and delete what no longer serves you. Word of warning, it took me nearly 3 days to sort out my emails. Remember Delete or file.

Organising Your Affiliate Links

One of the best ways to do this is by using Excel spreadsheets or Google Sheets if you work on an I Pad like me. Create one spreadsheet for your usernames and passwords for all the different accounts that you have. Having them all in one place means you will have a reference to go back to when needed. I also put my main affiliate links in their too for ease of use when all I need is a simple affiliate link.

If you do not have Excel, you can use a free app called Calc. You will need to download it first.

Use Excel spreadsheets or Google sheets to keep track of your tasks and progress too. Whatever needs to be recorded down in your business should be in your Excel files.

Dealing With The Desktop

If your are like me you will have left as many pages open on your screen as you can because you might go back to it or it’s a page you use often. Do yourself a favour and go close them all except the ones you use most days. If there’s a page you want to remember you can either do what I have done and written them in a small notebook for websites I want to remember and why. You could also do it in notes on your laptop or iPad but I’m a pen and paper kind of girl at heart.

Another way to get your desktop organised is to take all of the outdated infoproducts and reference guides and courses that are littering your hard drive and put them in one folder. You can sort these out by topics in subfolders within a main folder.

For example, if you have 3 websites like me, Building Websites, Toy Poodles and Presentation Skills, you should create one folder and name it My Sites then within the My Sites folders, you will have a Building Websites subfolder and a Toy Poodles subfolder and so on.

Doing this means your desktop will not be littered with hundreds of folders. We want to minimise all of our virtual clutter.

Like I said sometimes, good old pen and paper is fabulous option too. When you get ideas, you can quickly jot them down in a notebook which you will keep by your computer.  I also have a daily to-do list diary which is obviously right next to my IPad.  We are all different people and we all have different preferences.

Final Words

To be organised and efficient you must know exactly where everything is for when you need it. Time should not be wasted wondering where a certain item you need is or what your next task should be.

Have a list that will tell you what tasks you need to monitor on an ongoing basis. I have now printed out my list several times. I use it as a monthly check list. The month is done when everything is ticked off.

These are just some steps you can take to ensure you are organised and efficient when it comes to affiliate marketing. For every minute you spend organising, an hour is earned. Remember that and do your best to stay organised all the time so you don’t end up with a pile of chaos like me.

If you have any questions or want to suggest other ways to stay organised and efficient, just leave me a comment below and I will get back to you as soon as I can.

With Grace and Gratitude

Karen